


Generational Cycles

by Wolf2407



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types
Genre: Feels for Everyone, Fix-It, Gen, Kree battle slaves, Modified 3+1, Oneshot, and the 100 Ravager Clans, back together again, feel for you, feels for your cow, only good feels here folks, so not really a 5+1 but w/e, stakar & yondu feels, the 99 Ravager Ships, yondad feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-25 22:11:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12045324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf2407/pseuds/Wolf2407
Summary: "Easy there, son. It's alright."Four times those fives words are said, and the different circumstances for each time.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi folks!
> 
> This is my first time writing for the GotG 'verse, and actually my first time writing a fic in about four or five years, so I'm a bit rusty. I banged this puppy out in an afternoon, so if there's any errors I missed, just let me know!
> 
> EDIT 9/12: I managed to put all of the formatting back in! It might be worth a re-read or a re-skim if you read it on or before Sept. 11 2017.

He hadn’t exactly expected it to go this way.  
  
It was supposed to be an easy mission; sweep through a newly-destroyed settlement where the star the planet had been orbiting destabilized after a passing Kree warship siphoned it for emergency power. It’d thrown off blasts of radiation, cooking the peaceful race that had lived on a pleasant-enough rock that would barely qualify as a large moon in some systems. There had been some precious metals on it, though, and the people had been good traders, so there was a good chance of valuables being on the surface still. So, they’d orbited for a few days, circling the little planet like vultures, waiting for the star to settle back into stability and let them go to the surface.  
  
They hadn’t been the only ones with the idea. Seemed like the Kree had taken a bite out of the sun to go off somewhere else for a bit- probably another proxy war with Xandar and the Nova Corps- and then come back to pick at the carcass, too. He wondered if they’d really _meant_ to gain both fuel and loot in one go, or if it’d been a happy accident, but it didn’t really matter either way.  
  
The warship had been fairly small, as Kree ships went, and he’d hoped for not much of a fight. The best fighters were given the biggest, most ornate ships, while this one was a simple grey with the silvery streaks of steel and other alloys along its hull and thrusters, like the seams in a quilt.  
  
The ship hadn’t been ugly, but what it carried sure as hell was.  
  
Battle slaves.  
  
There were a handful of Pureborn on the ship, of course, plenty to charge onto the field of battle with great war-cries of their family names and promises of glory for their bloodlines and Hala. That had been fine and good; they made for good, honorable fighting, his crew answering with war-cries of their own, more to the tune of either dissonant wordless shouts or calls in a hundred languages for a hundred different homes, left behind.  
  
It was one thing to fight over-cocky noble boys who had never conceived of defeat before, never been hungry a day in their lives. It was one thing to know what the Kree did with the children he’d seen them buying at auction blocks.  
  
It’s another to shoot a Xandarian boy who couldn’t be older than seven charging at him with nothing but a tiny dagger for a weapon and a cloth pair of shorts for armor, screaming all the while. If the lower-ranking Pureborn didn’t even get armor, then the slaves sure as hell never did. When the plasma bolt hit the boy- he’d fired more on instinct than choice- he’d crumpled without a sound, falling facedown.  
  
Gashes covered his back, fresh whip-welts and raw, freshly-closed branding burns. _The Noble Family of Sakkaz_ had lost a small investment.  
  
Thinking about it too much makes him taste bile, and out of spite, he kicks the nearest Kree corpse, flipping it over. Underneath is the navy coat of one of his men, just one of many left on this godforsaken glorified moon. He bends down, pulling what had once been one of his crewmen fully out from under the Kree, and plants another flag in the soil next to him, so that the ones following with stretchers know where to go. They have to collect the bodies, give them a proper funeral. It took true dishonor to deprive a Ravager of that. Even if they argued and fought, they were brothers and sisters in the end. Every one- well, _nearly_ every one- of them deserved to have the Colors show them the way to the stars, their bodies and souls open and free in the great interstellar sea instead of on this _shitty fucking hellhole of a planet.  
  
_ Stakar Ogord sighed, kicked the Kree who had smothered his man again, and resumed his walk through the field of the dead.  
  
There are enough corpses to fill the little plain they’d fought on, Kree and slave and Ravager alike. In quite a few cases there isn’t enough flesh left to tell what species the corpse _used_ to be, just the color of their clothes to inform what side they’d be fighting on. He flags a few more bodies, shoots a Kree that didn’t look _quite_ dead enough for comfort, and barely catches a soft sound off to his right.  
  
He turns, blaster out and ready, then catches the flash of darker blue pinned under lighter blue. It’s close enough to navy that Stakar walks over, pulling aside the shredded corpse of the soldier.  
  
What’s underneath isn’t one of his men.  
  
A boy flinches at the sudden exposure to light, even though the sun’s filtered through all the dust the ships kicked up during their landing. He makes eye contact with Stakar- ruby red, and _tired-_ and there’s a flash of fear there as the boy tries to struggle away, but the bulk of the Kree soldier is still on one of his legs, so he can’t do much.  
  
The boy’s eyes never leave him, and even as his shoulders shake, he lifts his chin.  
  
“Do it, then,” he hissed, voice trembling with pain. Blood cakes the right side of his face and soaks the flimsy shirt and shorts he’s wearing, although it’s hard to tell how much of it is his.  
  
Centaurian, Stakar guesses, although it’s hard to tell. Scars snarl along the base of the flat red implant in his skull, and continue down his back, showing no signs of letting up when they disappear under his shirt. He can see the twisted spikes and prongs of the vertebrae in the boy’s neck poking against pale scar tissue.  
  
Centaurians are meant to have a crest- not a fin, although it’s too commonly called that by the unknowing- that starts right where the boy’s implant does and continues down the spine. An outcropping of bone in the skull supports it, along with delicate fingers extending from the spine until it terminates just above the small of the back. It’s integral to what a Centaurian _is;_ it’s used in telepathy, to communicate, as a display, as a decorated badge of honor by certain clans, who adorn it with jewelry and tattoos…  
  
…and this boy’s had that taken from him. A crack spiders over the top of the flat implant, which only sticks out an inch or so from the top of his skull, nothing like the ornate foot-high swoop of a _tahlei._ He’s clutching a dark golden arrow to his chest, cloudy red glass collaring it just behind the head, and more where the fletching would be on a normal arrow.  
  
A Yaka Arrow, Stakar knows. The metal’s only found on Centauri IV, and the Kree wouldn’t bother hunting it down for the kid. The boy was stolen off his homeworld, then, or sold.  
  
He understands now. The organic crest, the _tahlei,_ helps connect thought and signal from brain to Yaka. The Kree had taken away everything else it did, the quality-of-life things, but left the one thing useful to them.  
  
_“Do it,”_ the kid hisses again, breaking Stakar’s reverie. “Go ahead and finish it!”  
  
There’s a begging tone in those words, spoken in Lesser Kree-Lar, the language of slaves, and it makes Stakar’s heart hurt.  
  
And again, he doesn’t really _think,_ just acts on instinct.  
  
He holsters his blaster, and kneels beside the boy. It’s hard to tell how old he is, since the Kree never feed their slaves enough to push them past just-barely-not-dying, and there’s no accent of any of the Centaurian languages in the boy’s speech, so he must have been taken young.  
  
“Easy there, son,” Stakar says softly. “It’s alright. You’re safe now. I’m not going to hurt you.”  
  
The boy blinks at him. Probably thinks it’s a cruel trick, that Stakar’s waiting to snap some sort of trap on him.  
  
“Don’t,” the boy says softly, and closes his eyes. “Just fucking _finish it_ already. Why are you wasting your time?”  
  
Battle-slaves, Stakar knows, have had all questions whipped out of them. The boy’s trying to push him into some sort of rage-fit.  
  
Another thing, among a thousand, taken from the boy: his teeth have been filed to points. Stakar can see the notches where the file slipped, probably as the boy thrashed and screamed.  
  
He doesn’t say anything, trying to hold himself perfectly still, perfectly calm. The boy’s had enough pain and tumult for a hundred lifetimes, he’s sure, and the proof is in the dull black collar around his neck, studded with hooks and loops for a hand to grab or a chain to be fastened.  
  
Inspired, Stakar reaches toward the boy, who had been looking at him again but now closed his eyes, gulped in air, and turned his face away.  
  
It’s not hard to do at all.  
  
Those ruby-red eyes open again when the collar pulls away from his neck slightly, the skin underneath pale and scarred and bruised. Stakar pulls it away, the collar clanking in his hand slightly as it swings on its one hinge, the lock undone. On closer inspection, blood stains the entire thing, inside and out, blue and red and grey and black and a dozen other colors from the myriad of species that passed through the fighting pits on Hala and her asteroids and moons.  
  
Disgusted, Stakar throws it away with most of his strength, watching it go flying until it thuds against a body somewhere in the distance.  
  
The boy’s turned to look at him again, and he’s starting to fight his way into a sitting position. Stakar stands, pulling the Kree all the way off the boy, who immediately pulls his legs toward him, but doesn’t stand and run yet. He’s staring at Stakar wide-eyed, like he can’t begin to comprehend what he’d doing. His narrow chest is heaving, and now only one hand clutches his arrow while another feels the skin on his throat.  
  
How long, Stakar wondered, had it been since the last time he could do that?  
  
He squats next to the boy, who doesn’t flinch away now.  
  
“You’re free now,” he promises the boy, and the boy blinks back at him, the breath in his lungs shaky like he’s holding back a sob. “Ain’t nobody ever gonna make you go back there. Never. If they try you _fight like hell,_ you get me?”  
  
The boy nods furiously.

Stakar stands.  
  
“The Kree have some auxiliary ships that made it through the fight,” he says. “You can take one, if you want. I can give you coordinates for wherever you want to go, and the nav-system on the ship will show you the way. Do you know how to fly?”  
  
The boy shakes his head, and his hands are quivering too, either from shock, or adrenaline letdown, or emotional turmoil, or a hundred other things.  
  
Stakar sighs.  
  
“You could come with me, and join my crew. We’re called Ravagers,” he says, waiting to see if the boy’s familiar with the name, but there isn’t any sign. “We have a code of honor to hold to, and that’d include you if you choose to come with us. It’s safer to run the galaxy with someone else watching your back.”  
  
The boy nods in agreement.  
  
“Ravagers look out for each other,” Stakar says. “So long as you hold to the code.”  
  
He holds out a hand to the boy.  
  
“What do you say?”  
  
The boy stares at him for another moment, clutching his arrow close to his heart, then takes his hand.

_**_

 

It twinges at a scrap of what once had been a conscience, picking the boy up like this.  
  
He knew about the kid’s mother, but hadn’t precisely expected _this._ To arrive at the exact moment of her death was, well… unfortunate.  
  
It made the kid easy to grab, though, so there was that.  
  
He’s let Kraglin stay on the bridge- boy’s competent enough to skim the ship planetside then pull her back out among the stars again. His duty’s in the cargo hold, verifying that it’s the _right_ kid. They’d grabbed the wrong one once and gotten halfway to their destination before Yondu had bothered to double-check the gene-print. That’d been a waste of one-point-five million quarts of fuel he wasn’t keen to repeat.  
  
The tractor beam finishes its job, and the hatch door closes unceremoniously behind the kid just before the beam lets him drop down. It’s not very far, just a few inches or a foot or so, so it’s more out of surprise that the kid crumples to the ground than actual incapability to stand.  
  
Or maybe Terrans are just that fragile.  
  
The kid’s chest shakes with sobs, a thin, whimper-like noise coming from his throat. Yondu sighs, and steps forward.  
  
“Easy there, son,” he says gently enough, showing open hands. The kid’s back on his feet, positively shaking with fear. “It’s alright.”  
  
The kid stares at him blankly, like he isn’t even recognizing the sounds Yondu is making as speech.  
  
Yondu’s brow furrows. “Boy,” he calls, and doesn’t walk forward towards the kid, because frightened creatures of any kind are dangerous in their own way. “Can you understand me?”  
  
The kid keeps staring, and shaking, and making that whining sound, his backpack pulled tight around his shoulders and a little grey box clutched tightly in his hands. There’s no recognition in his eyes.  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yondu says, exasperated. “Don’t tell me Terra’s such a fuckin’ backwater that they don’t have _translator chips!”_  
  
As it turns out, Terra is indeed just that kind of backwater. Once he’s got the kid herded into a cleared-out storage closet (less _herded_ and more _dragged,_ and he’d aggressively ignored the way the whites of the boy’s eyes had shown as Yondu led him around) he goes back to the bridge of the _Eclector._  
  
Kraglin looks up from the nav-panels. “Captain on the bridge,” he calls out to the rest of the crew, standing and going to Yondu, meeting him halfway between the door and the command panel. Kraglin thumps his chest with his fist in salute, the leather on their jackets the same shade of merlot.  
  
“Everything go well, cap’n?”  
  
“Kid doesn’t have a translator chip,” Yondu growls, letting himself fall into the captain’s chair. “We’re going to have to get him one, if we want him to understand his daddy.”  
  
Kraglin frowns thoughtfully. “Do we have one on board?”  
  
“Nah,” Yondu says, picking at his teeth. “Nothing compatible with the size of his brain, anyway. Should be able to get it done cheaply and discreetly on Knowhere. S’not too far from here.”  
  
The extra trip will give him time to think about Ego.  
  
He’d delivered twelve children, so far. This Terran would be the thirteenth. And he had no reason to think he’s the first courier Ego has employed, or even the only one working for him right now. The job postings weren’t completely unknown, although the whispers along the grapevine spoke of _living planet_ and _Celestial_ and _baby-killer._  
  
Yondu had swallowed that tatter of a conscience that had survived the pits on Hala and his travels with the Ravagers. It was good money, and what did the whispers know anyway? They’d been wrong before.  
  
But that planet made his skin fucking _crawl._ The grass reached out and wrapped around your legs unnaturally, the ground felt unsteady beneath your feet, and despite the fact that Yondu had personally delivered eleven children the last time he was in the process of delivering the twelfth, and he’d heard of at least two other captains who’d done at least eight or ten apiece…  
  
…the planet was silent.  
  
The great palace in the distance, maybe half a mile from their accustomed meeting spot, was always immaculate. Quiet. Perfect.  
  
The whole damn planet was unchanged. People living on a planet wore paths through grass, made marks on trees, left signs of life. But there were none of those on that crimson savannah.  
  
Yondu swallowed, thought of the silent planet that should have positively thrummed with life, and pulled up the holo-comm on the arm of his chair, punching in a set of numbers and letters he was starting to feel should have never been allowed to become so familiar.  
  
Kraglin bowed his head and made a noticeable effort to lower the volume of his own chairside computer as he ran the calculations for the Knowhere run. Nobody else seemed to have particularly noticed his call.  
  
Sure enough, Ego’s face appeared on the screen, carefully schooled (Yondu was sure) into a pleasant expression.  
  
“Thought you might like to know we jus’ picked up the kid,” said Yondu. “He doesn’t have a translator chip, so we’re going to put one in him before we bring him around. It’ll delay us a bit, ‘n I didn’t want you thinking we’d absconded with your cargo.”  
  
Ego laughed. “Of course not, Captain Udonta,” and the words are no longer half as pleasing as Yondu originally found them. “Thank you for taking care of that for me. I _do_ hate going offworld.”  
  
_Lazy fucking bastard._  
  
For the price being offered, Ego gets Yondu’s courtesies- not his finest ones, but still good. He smiles slightly, and dips his head. “It’s no trouble,” even though it is, actually, a bit of trouble. “Say, I was wonderin’ how little Pashka is doing.”  
  
Pashka was the sixth child Yondu had delivered. She’d been Xandarian, her skin a rosy pink. Parashkha had been her full name, but it was awfully long for a six-year-old to say, so whenever she met anyone she’d insisted _“call me Pashka!”_  
  
Ego’s face went blank, then became confused, and Yondu’s stomach dropped back to the core of Terra.  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
“Parashkha,” Yondu clarified, gathering himself into the absolute fucking _paragon_ of calm. “The sixth child I returned to you.”  
  
What a fucked-up way of looking at it. Ego insisted that the crimson planet was the natural home for his children, their birthright by blood. They weren’t being abducted, they were simply being _returned_ to where they belonged.  
  
Ego’s face waited just a second too long to light up with realization. “Yes! Parashkha! She’s doing well.”  
  
No more detail was forthcoming, and Yondu began to feel ill. He looked out the viewing windows.  
  
“Apologies, but I’m going to have to disconnect, we’re about to hit an asteroid field,” he said quickly, making a show of reaching for controls and flipping switches. “Bit of tricky navigation coming up.”  
  
Ego laughed, and Yondu’s skin crawled. “Of course, Captain! Keep in touch!”  
  
Yondu slammed his finger against the disconnect button, and let himself properly growl this time.  
  
Kraglin glanced over, instinctively leaning forward to begin priming auxiliary thrusters and hitting switches before even checking the window.  
  
Then he did.  
  
“…Cap’n?”  
  
Yondu hummed in acknowledgement.  
  
“I don’t see an asteroid belt on the radar?”  
  
No. They’d already passed the little band of rocks closest to Terra, and the outlying one was so sparse that they didn’t need to worry about it.  
  
“There isn’t one,” Yondu said as he returned the switches to their original configuration. “I didn’t want to talk to that asshole anymore.”  
  
Kraglin looks intrigued, but doesn’t ask.  
  
“When you’re done with the Knowhere chart, scan the job boards,” Yondu adds flippantly, turning more switches, flipping others, drawing electrical power and fuel away from the auxiliary thrusters suited for fine maneuvers like docking and planetside movement, feeding more and more into the main interstellar-class thrusters.  
  
The ship thrummed as they wound up, and he tried not to think of the boy who’d been so afraid, who must _still_ be afraid because he’s never been on a ship before and doesn’t understand what’s happening, clutching his reminder of home like a talisman against terror.  
  
The memory of when it had been him makes his neck itch.

 

_**_

 

He doesn’t know how long they’re in the void, hanging there weightlessly, while his throat goes raw with screaming, while the life passes out of his captain, his _real_ father, bit by bit, as his biological father falls to dust and burns.  
  
His mind isn’t there now, isn’t focusing on how something he’d never noticed slips from his bones and his soul as the planet’s surface buckles, as the fucking _Light_ that had caused all of this died and left the universe, and his body, too, he can’t pull from it anymore, can’t do anything to stop this from happening in front of him.  
  
He saved the Galaxy, maybe even the Universe, but can’t save _one more._  
  
_“Yondu!”_ Peter screams, and a hundred other words besides, begging, pleading, praying.  
  
He doesn’t notice the tractor beam snare them both, doesn’t come out of his fugue state until his body thumps against a metal floor, Yondu falling away from him and sound besides his own voice filling his ears.  
  
It has to be some last trick of Ego’s, it was all for nothing, he _survived-_  
  
Peter lunges, and something wraps around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. He thrashes, snapping with his teeth-  
  
“Easy there, son,” a commanding voice calls, and Peter inhales sharply at the unfamiliarity of it. “It’s alright. You’re safe now. Nobody here’s going to hurt you.”  
  
The man walks quickly towards them, and Peter lunges again as the stranger kneels at Yondu’s side, his navy-blue coat obscuring Peter’s view.  
  
“Get him to the med-bay immediately,” the man commands, standing, and more men in navy swarm to comply. The man turns to Peter, stopping just short of him, watching as Peter struggles against the arms of something who could well be one of Drax’s cousins for how damn strong he is.  
  
“Boy,” the man calls softly, and Peter stops, if only to look back at him.  
  
Those grey eyes seem to bore into his soul. Peter can’t tell if they’re pleased with what they find.  
  
“The name’s Stakar Ogord,” the man says finally. “You’re on my ship, the _Valkyrie._ Her crew are all my men, the Stakar Ravager Clan.”  
  
_Ravager Clan._  
  
Peter blinks, swallows, then looks down to the ground.  
  
“I-“  
  
“I know who you are,” Stakar says, and he sounds _tired._ “You can let him go now, Martinex.”  
  
Peter slumps to the floor.  
  
_Boy, never go hunting out other Ravager Clans. You ain’t welcome with them. They’ll eat ya as soon as look at ya._  
  
Stakar bends down in front of him, and Peter looks at him warily, with Yondu’s words echoing in his head. The eating part might have been exaggerated, but there had to be a reason that they’d quickly left any space where other Ravagers were, why they didn’t take any jobs that specifically _asked_ for Ravagers and instead had to scrounge the same boards as the other mercenaries and petty thieves.  
  
“Kid,” Stakar calls, bringing Peter back down to- well, not Earth, but the present. “You alright?”  
  
_Less than fifty hours ago I met my biological father who turned out to actually be a billions-years-old planet who killed all of the thousands of offspring who didn’t meet his expectations, and then I killed him because he was going to wipe all life that wasn’t him out of the universe. And then the person who really was my father-figure all those years but I never appreciated it killed himself to save me._  
  
“Yeah,” Peter says, because you just don’t dump emotional rants on strangers, and tries to stand up. He staggers until Stakar reaches out to steady him.  
  
“Go up to the bridge, Martinex,” Stakar says. “I can handle him. Make sure we don’t hit anything or anybody while we’re here. Watch out for the rubble from the planet.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” Martinex replied, and began walking away. It wasn’t until then that Peter realized that his former captor appeared to be made of glass.  
  
“He’s a Pluvian,” Stakar says by way of explanation, looping one of Peter’s arms around his shoulders and supporting most of his weight as they start walking. “He’s silicon-based instead of carbon-based like you and me.”  
  
Peter hums in recognition, not entirely sure what to do with the information.  
  
He lets Stakar lead him around. If the man wanted him dead, he’d be dead already, his neck shattered by Martinex or just simply left in the void of space.  
  
“Where’s Yondu?” Peter asks eventually.  
  
“I had my men take him to our medbay,” Stakar replies, staring straight ahead, wondering if Yondu thought this boy had been worth it. “Ours is a bit more advanced than what you have on the _Eclector._ I expect they have him in a full-immersion bacta tank now, while they work on getting him back around to the land of the living.”  
  
Peter blinked.  
  
“He was dead,” he says quietly, his speech getting slower the longer he spent not in the vacuum or actively fighting for his life. “I felt it. I saw the light go out of his eyes.”  
  
“Boy,” Stakar says firmly, “you can’t be sure anybody’s frozen to death until they’re _warm_ and dead.”  
  
Peter stumbles at the truth of it.  
  
“Where are you taking me?”  
  
“To the med-bay. In case you haven’t noticed, you aren’t using your right leg and you’re bleeding all over my ship.”  
  
Ah.  
  
Now that he thinks about it, his mouth does taste sort of like blood-  
  
-and the call to sleep is too strong to fight.

 

_*_

 

They don’t say much.  
  
Gamora had raged at him when she awoke, but now she was settled in one of the passenger seats on the _Quadrant,_ her head buried in her hands. Nebula’s skulking somewhere, probably down in the cargo area. Wherever she wasn’t that he also wasn’t was a good place for her.  
  
They wait, sitting outside of the gravitational reach of Ego’s Planet, close enough to watch the surface crumple on itself, then form a screaming face that shatters into magma plates, then explodes under its own weight.  
  
He doesn’t see Yondu, or Quill.  
  
Rocket snaps his teeth, snarling. “Damn it,” he chants, “damn it, damn it, _damn it.”_  
  
Groot coos in his ear, rubbing at the fur along the back of his skull. “I am Groot,” he chirps, translating into _what happened?_  
  
“He had a spacesuit and an aero-rig,” Rocket says. “One of each, it was all I had. He wouldn’t have left without Quill, and he didn’t have the supplies to take both of them into space-“  
  
Apparently, it’d have done them just as well to not have anything at all.  
  
Kraglin, in a stupor in the captain’s chair, suddenly snaps to attention.  
  
“Look,” he says, pointing- “look, _there!”_  
  
Rocket flies against the glass, looking for a flash of blue, of a red coat, but instead it’s a goddamn _ship._  
  
“What,” says Gamora, her breath ruffling the fur on his shoulder, “is _that?”_  
  
“Help,” Rocket says coldly, “five minutes too late.”  
  
“But- but that’s the _Valkyrie!_ That’s Stakar Ogord’s warship,” Kraglin sputters. “What the fresh hell is he doing here-“  
  
“I called him,” Rocket spat. “I commed him when I was on my way back up from the surface, because I thought he’d want to know what happened here. I asked him to come and bring medical supplies, because we don’t have any, and I told him what Yondu did. I figured _somebody_ would come off of that fucking rock, but I guess not.”  
  
Any other day, he’d be picking his jaw up off of the floor after seeing the _Valkyrie._ She’s navy blue with silver accents, and size-wise, she is to the _Eclector_ as the _Quadrant_ was.  
  
“I haven't seen her in years,” Kraglin murmured, and took his hands off of the _Quadrant’s_ controls. “Only pictures, to keep me up to date, so that I knew what to steer away from.”  
  
“What could one man ever need a ship that big for?” Drax asked.  
  
“It’s not one man,” Kraglin said. “It’s a crew of five thousand, and the ship of the leader of all of the Ravager clans.”  
  
And then the _Valkyrie_ activates her tractor beam. Gamora gasps softly; Rocket presses himself even _further_ into the glass, and can just barely see-  
  
_“They got him,”_ Gamora breathes, and Rocket’s heart stutters. “They’ve got them both, they pulled them onboard!”  
  
There’s a moment of complete, utter silence.  
  
Then chaos breaks out.  
  
_“What are you waiting for?”_ Drax roars, and Kraglin scrambles to prime the _Quadrant’s_ thrusters while Rocket scrambles for the comm.  
  
“ _Valkyrie_ bridge,” an almost-bored voice says on the other end of the line. “Martinex speaking.”  
  
“I’m the one who asked you to come,” Rocket fires. “I’m asking permission to board. You have our friends, and-“  
  
“The Guardians of the Galaxy,” Martinex names them calmly, and Rocket gets the feeling he’s the type whose voice doesn’t show emotion even if they’re on fire. “Yes. We know who you are.”  
  
_“And?”_ Rocket snarls.  
  
“You may come aboard,” Martinex continues smoothly. “Docking Bay One Hundred and Twenty-Seven has room for your ship.”  
  
The comm clicks off.  
  
Kraglin throws the throttle lever forward, slamming Rocket and Groot back in their seat and Gamora and Drax to the floor. He veers harshly away from the _Valkyrie_ when another warship, nearly as massive, falls out of lightspeed warp just alongside it.  
  
“I didn’t call this one,” Rocket says instantly, clawing at the seat for purchase. “And you didn’t need to swerve!”  
  
“’S the _Sharpwing,”_ Kraglin says, ignoring him. This new ship is forest green instead of blue. “Aleta’s ship.”  
  
“Who the hell is Aleta?”  
  
“Stakar’s wife,” Kraglin says simply, and throws them in another sharp turn as they begin to circle the _Valkyrie_. He scans for the large numbers stamped over caverns in the ship, but there aren’t any on this side.  
  
_Where the hell is it?_  
  
An M-Ship drops out of the _Sharpwing,_ and Kraglin dives the _Quadrant_ between the two warships, watching the M-ship’s thrusters light up. It’s a slightly darker green than its mothership, but that could just be solar bleaching to the _Sharpwing,_ too.  
  
When Rocket starts to grumble again, he banks the _Quadrant_ harshly.  
  
_“Will you stop doing that,”_ three voices protest along with a tinny _“I am Groot”_ , but they, again, get ignored.  
  
“There they are,” Kraglin says to himself, finally spotting the array of bays along the side of the _Valkyrie._ He dives for them-  
  
-but yields to the M-ship.  
  
He’s not one to come between Stakar and Aleta, not even for his captain and Quill, not if the stories he’s gotten out of Yondu late at night are even a quarter true.  
  
Focused on queueing and giving Aleta a good berth, he doesn’t see the third warship pull in, on the other side of the _Valkyrie._  
  
Or the fourth.  
  
Or the eighth.  
  
When they do follow the M-ship into bay 127, Kraglin takes a moment to watch it- _lovely_ bird, bit bigger than the ones the _Eclector_ stocked, and with even more deluxe features than the _Milano_ or the _Warbird-_ soar into a perfectly fitted dock, like it was going home.  
  
The _Quadrant_ gets a much less elegant resting place, sliding into an open dock with a holding forcefield that’d fit to nearly any shape ship. After all, he supposed, it wasn’t very often you wanted to park a Quadrant on some other part of your warship.  
  
He powers down the engines, Drax spitting curses at him while Gamora collected herself. Rocket mumbled something under his breath, and headed for the door.

 

_*_

 

Breathing feels like rasping sandpaper over an open wound.  
  
Yondu twitches, then realizes how much _that_ hurts, too. The more awake he gets, the more it hurts.  
  
Being dead fucking _sucks,_ he decides. They’d all thought it was a place where pain couldn’t get to you anymore, but that was as false as the day was long on the sunny side of an orbitally-locked planet.  
  
He takes a deep breath, then regrets it.  
  
Then he opens his eyes. Blinks them a few times to try to get everything to focus in right. It takes awhile, but it gets there, or close enough.  
  
His eyes fix on the ceiling, and then he blinks again, then looks around. It’s changed a bit, but…  
  
…apparently the afterlife is the medbay on Stakar’s _Valkyrie._  
  
He becomes aware of something moving on his left side, and turns his head- with a _great_ deal of pain- to fix on a navy coat, just as the pain eases, then fades to nearly nothing.  
  
“Bumped up your painkillers for you,” a medic says. “Care for some water?”  
  
Yondu nods, about all he _can_ do, and is, at this point in his life, a master of drinking out of a cup someone else is holding. After that, the medic leaves.  
  
Some time after that, the doors flash open, and in walks the last damn man Yondu thought he would see again.  
  
“Stakar,” he says, or _tries_ to say, since most of the sound dies in his throat. He starts to push himself upright, even though the pain spikes in his heavily-bandaged hand, until a hand gently pushes on his shoulder _(it still hurts)_ , pinning him to the bed.  
  
“Easy there,” Stakar says, an odd light in his eyes as he pulls up a chair. “You spent a good amount of time out there in vacuum. Another few minutes and we would have been too late.”  
  
He lets this soak in, then anticipates the questions so Yondu doesn’t have to say them.  
  
“The small furry one on your crew called us, asking for help. Said he needed our manpower and our medical gear, since you’ve apparently lost all of yours.”  
  
Yondu nods slowly, letting that percolate through, too.  
  
“Your boy-“ Yondu inhales sharply, and _regrets it again goddamnit-_ “wouldn’t stop screaming and fighting us. Took Marty and I a good while to get him to listen to me. He’s fine. Little bit roughed up, but nothing we couldn’t fix or get on the mend. He woke up a few times, wouldn’t calm down until we brought him to you. He’s sleeping over there,” Stakar indicated with a twitch of his head, although Yondu couldn’t see through him to it.  
  
“The furry one and a few others came onboard the _Valkyrie_ just a little bit ago. I expect they’ll be going through weapons checks for awhile. Are there any more coming?”  
  
Yondu made a motion that was a fair approximation of moving his head side-to-side, just on nano-scale.  
  
Stakar took a breath at that. Yondu envied him.  
  
“What happened to the _Eclector?”_  
  
Yondu closed his eyes, swallowed harshly even though his mouth was dry and his throat hurt like hell.  
  
“Did you lose it during the fight here?”  
  
No, he indicated.  
  
“Leave it somewhere else?”  
  
No.  
  
“Was there a mutiny?”  
  
Yes.  
  
“Goddamnit,” Stakar says quietly. “So the ones here that pulled up in the _Quadrant_ are the last ones left.”  
  
Yondu coughs, even though it feels like swallowing knives. “Yeah,” he manages at a whisper. “Just Kraglin, others ain’ mine.”  
  
Stakar nods at that. “I see.” He stands. “I’ll let you get some rest. One more thing, though, that you should know.”  
  
Yondu stares at him. _Well?_  
  
“The other ninety-eight ships are here, too,” Stakar says quietly. “I told them what you did, that there was a chance I was going to your funeral instead of your rescue. I told them how you made it right, what you did all those years ago. They came for you, to fly their colors over your ashes.”  
  
It wasn’t the frostbite that made the breath catch in his throat.  
  
“Son, all you had to do was ask. I would have helped you make it right.”  
  
Yondu shook his head. “I didn’t know.”  
  
“If the _Eclector_ was here, we’d have a hundred Ravager warships,” Stakar sighed, looking off into the distance. “Shame she didn’t make it. Would have been quite the sight.”  
  
One hundred Ravager warships.  
  
_One hundred Ravager warships-_  
  
“Say what now,” Yondu manages to sputter out, and ignores the stabbing in his throat.  
  
“Welcome back,” Stakar says, the hint of a smile on his face as he turns away. He takes one last look at Yondu- appraising the new implant with something like _approval-_ and walks out. Outside, Yondu could hear Aleta’s voice, rising in volume then falling again.  
  
_Now_ he sees Quill, sitting next to the door-  
  
-watching.  
  
Their eyes meet, red and green, and for a while they just stare at each other.  
  
Quill moves first. There’s a heavy-looking cast on his right leg, and bandages here and there on his head and hands and probably more places Yondu can’t see, so it’s not with his usual pretty-boy gait he crosses the room, but he manages it all the same and drops into the chair Stakar had vacated.  
  
“Don’t ever do that to me again,” Peter says, his voice low and rough. “Or I will personally chase you through hell for all eternity.”  
  
Yondu smiles at that, just barely, then remembered what Stakar had said.  
  
_He wouldn’t stop screaming._  
  
The last time Quill had acted like that was when they’d picked him up. After the first shock of being around vaguely-predatory-looking aliens had worn off (two days or so, it’d taken), he’d spent most of his time holed up in the supply closet that had turned into his room. Screaming, the entire way to Knowhere.  
  
It got worse once they understood what he was saying.  
  
Yondu blinks stiffly, trying to flush away the memory.  
  
“I’m sorry I stole the Orb,” Peter says suddenly, and then it comes spilling out. “I’m sorry I left you, but I thought- I knew- we both knew, the Stone would only be safe with the Nova Corps, and-“  
  
He laid a thickly-bandaged hand on the boy’s arm.  
  
“And I’m sorry about the mutiny,” Peter continues, bowing his head. “That was my fault, I _know_ it was, you were always easier on me than the rest of the crew and I _know_ that’s why it happened. I was too fucking stupid to see it before, I’m so sorry, I never looked and I never appreciated what you did-“  
  
The hand on his arm moves to his chest, and even through the bandages Yondu can feel the beating of Peter’s heart.  
  
That’s all that matters. Not ten million credits lost twenty years ago, not a twenty-year exile, not the loss of the _Eclector_ that still panged somewhere close to his heart. Those were all gone now, with no changing them from being that way.  
  
Peter takes his hand, and rests his head on the edge of the mattress. Yondu manages to put his other hand on his head.  
  
“Easy there, son,” he echoes. There’s no bloodthirsty crew around to put up a front for anymore. “We’re going to be alright.”


	2. Chapter 1.5 (The Missing Scene)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to include the Rocket/Stakar comm-call in the last chapter. Here it is!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I really did mean to include this in the first chapter, but I forgot to. Since there was interest in the comments section for seeing it, here it is! (Although I suppose it's long enough to stand alone as another oneshot.)
> 
> Also, I fixed the formatting issues with Chapter 1; all of the italics and other fun stuff are back now, and I feel like it's worth re-skimming the story to pick up on, since it adds a little bit of ambiance to the text.

“You need to take care of the twig.”  
  
_“Not without you.”_  
  
There’s a wound burrowing through the artificially arranged bones and muscles in his chest, clawing through scarred skin and fractures that had broken and healed at least half a hundred times. It _hurts,_ hurts worse and in a place the scientists never reached, despite not leaving a physical mark at all.  
  
“You need to give me this.”  
  
His jaw works, sharp canines clicking, his ears popping as the atmosphere shudders, destabilizing. It won’t be breathable for much longer.  
  
_Fine, then, you noble asshole, you self-sacrificing bastards, just leave me alone again, why don’t you-_  
  
He will _not_ cry, but he tastes salt in the back of his throat as he rummages through his pockets.  
  
“Here. A suit and an aero-rig. One of each. It’s all I have.”  
  
Their eyes meet, and they both know the death sentence that that entails. The aero-rig could easily carry Yondu and Quill’s combined weight, sure, but a spacesuit would refuse to cover two bodies.  
  
_Bring ten fucking spares next time,_ Rocket snarls to himself. _Ten or twenty, no matter how heavy it is. Never let this happen again._  
  
But there won’t _be_ a next time. It’s not every lifetime you fight a fucking planet.  
  
Yondu takes the gear, Groot says his piece. Rocket, wheels turning in his head, turns and leaves before the hurt currently working its way through his sternum can claw through to his vital organs and render him immobile.  
  
_Think, think, think, you idiot, you fucking idiot, there’s got to be a last minute fix, some last trick to pull out of the bag-_  
  
His bag’s empty.  
  
_No bag then. Metaphorical bag. Is there a cavalry to be called-_  
  
_“Stakar and the other captains and I, we were like you and your friends once.”_  
  
He loses balance for a moment, swerves around a falling rock, can’t look down, can’t look back or he’ll be lost-  
  
He flogs a blast of speed out of his aero-rig, and lands on a cliff that _just_ settles into a more-stable state as he lands on it and whips out his comm-link.  
  
_“I am Groot?”_ _What’re you doing?_  
  
“Asking for a miracle,” Rocket says frankly, his fingers flying over the data he’d ported from the _Eclector_ to the _Quadrant_ to his own comm-link. He hopes, prays, as he brings up the contact address and starts the call.  
  
Rocks tumble around them; he can’t stay long-  
  
_“Starhawk!”_ Rocket calls out, because Quill always just fucking _preens_ and loves it when people call him by his cutesy nickname and maybe it runs in the family and just skipped a generation. “I need your help.”  
  
The man on the other end leans forward, his semi-bored expression melting away into concentration and intrigue as he peers into the link, trying to figure out what, exactly, is happening on Rocket’s end of the line. That’s a good sign, right?  
  
“I don’t have much time to explain,” Rocket says, and another boulder slams against the cliff above him and bounces away to prove his point. This has gotta be _right,_ gotta be _perfect,_ this is the most important thing he’s done with his worthless life. “Please, I’m begging you, help us. We’re at Ego’s Planet-“ the man’s eyes widen, and he opens his mouth, teeth bared, fighting words behind them- _“-give me a chance to explain!_ We came here to make it right, to finish what never should have been started. Look.” He spins the comm-link around in his hands, then surges off of the cliff to get an aerial view of the terrain collapsing, the sky rippling and shifting colors the way no sky had a right to. In the distance, he can see the heaving of columns, the slamming of astronomical-class forces as Ego’s fury makes itself known.  
  
His gut goes cold, and the pain starts eagerly chewing on his lungs, working its way through.  
  
“We don’t have the manpower to do it any other way,” Rocket narrates, his voice thin and twisted, the way it gets when his throat burns and he’s holding back tears. _Not now. Not now!_ “Yondu and his boy, the boy he gave up your protection for, they’re still down there, fighting him.” He flips the comm back to him, just as the sky flashes crimson, the rock reaches out to snatch his foot; Rocket fucking _guns it_ until he’s out of the canyon and within an acceptable distance of the _Quadrant,_ watching the man’s anger go to the same place the same place the boredom had, leaving him with an expression Rocket can’t read with the comm being shaken about by the aero-rig _._ “We don’t have the equipment to get them off’a the surface. When one or both of them do get outta here, they’re going to need medical gear, more gear that _we don’t have!_ ” His voice breaks at that, he’s the _king_ of gear, and yet he doesn’t _have the right tools-_ “Please, I’m begging you, _help us-“_  
  
“Message received,” says Stakar Ogord, and the screen goes black.  
  
Then it shatters, as a smattering of fine rocks hit Rocket as the ground heaves again. He can’t wait any longer- _they_ can’t wait any longer. He crash-lands in the _Quadrant,_ puts down Gamora like tranquilizing a frightened animal, like had been done to him ten thousand times, and his heart breaks, and the pieces fall apart as he barks out the order to _go._  
  
It wasn’t his place to disrespect a man’s last wish.  
  
He hops into the copilot’s seat, bringing Groot down from his shoulder, just for a moment, just to hold him close.  
  
_“I am Groot.” He’s coming, right?_  
  
“We can only hope, buddy,” Rocket whispers, his voice drowned out for the others by the wailing of the _Quadrant’s_ mistuned thrusters. He supposed the ship had probably only been moved by herself instead of as the nosecone of the _Eclector_ maybe five times in the last thirty years, so these engines and turbines had never been a priority. Maybe, if he still has a will to live after this, he’ll have to take a look at them, see what he can do.  
  
But for now, he tucks Groot’s shoulder in the tiny valley between the halves of his lower jaw, Groot’s arms reaching up to wrap around his snout. He was still just a baby, Rocket remembered suddenly. Just a baby. Who knew what kind of shit had happened to him while he was alone in Ego’s core-  
  
_“I am Groot.”_ _I miss them. “I am Groot?”_ _Will we see them again?_  
  
It’s sort of a deep question for Groot.  
  
“Maybe,” Rocket whispers. “Might be today. Might be a hundred years from now. But maybe.”  
  
Groot coos at him softly, hand running along the bristly little hairs under his eyes, pulling away the tears. Groot had always hated seeing other living things in pain- well, those that hadn’t hurt him or his friends first.  
  
His fur twitched, his body shook with a sob. Groot continued cooing, stroking his fur, _singing_ the melody-notes of one of Quill’s stupid fucking songs that he’d go through fifty more rounds of experimentation to hear again.  
  
He’d had a good thing here, the makings of a _real good fucking thing,_ and he threw it away.  
  
Rocket hoped beyond hope he’d get a second chance.

  
  
_**_

  
  
He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As before, leave comments if you spot any mistakes, or just tell me what you think! :) Also, feel free to leave requests for more threshed-out scenes like this one, or implied scenes from the fic or the movie you'd like to see fully mapped. Or any other requests, too. :)

**Author's Note:**

> I had to make up names for the differentiations between battle slaves and Kree soldiers, and the details of the slave collars, and Stakar and Aleta's ship names, since I couldn't find anything for those.
> 
> Please leave comments and tell me what you think! :)


End file.
